


Elemental

by ReaperWriter



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four things Clint and Natasha know about each other, and one thing they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elemental

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airspaniel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airspaniel/gifts).



> For AirSpaniel. This is 12% your fault.

She often says that love is for children, but Tasha has a soft spot for old movies, black and white films from another time.  The first time he catches her watching _Adam’s Rib_ , she hurriedly shuts it off amid mumbles of stupid late night television.  The next time, when she has been injured, and he’s checking on her, she asks him to put the disc for _Philadelphia Story_ in the player, in too much pain to feel shame about it.  The third time, after a long mission, they end up back at her quarters, drinking vodka and tequila, and watching _Casablanca_ while they ice their wounds.  Soon, movie night becomes a regular thing when they were both on leave.  She always chooses, and surprisingly, he’s loved every film she’s picked.  For Christmas that year, he gave her a collection of Katherine Hepburn films.

 

He’s surprisingly superstitious.  Tasha slowly noticed the little rituals that accompany the start of every mission.  Touching his bow grip three times when he packs it.  Checking each arrow carefully before placing it in the quiver.  And his lucky black shirt, which he wears at the outset of every mission.  Like clockwork, he’s almost OCD about it.  And at the end of each mission, he always puts his hand on the door to his quarters for a minute with his eyes closed, in recognition of coming home again.  Somewhere, along the line, he adds a ritual.  If Tasha is there at the outset, he grabs her hand and gives it a squeeze.  And he does it again when he comes home.  Even when they aren’t working together, she makes an effort to be there for him at those times.  The mission is the dessert is the first time, in a long time, that she’s not.

 

It still surprises him how girly she is, when she doesn’t have to be the badass secret agent.  She almost never wears pants out of uniform, opting instead for flowing skirts or fitted gowns.  He’s always been more of a jeans and t-shirts guy, but he finds that dressing up with her is fun.  She also loves things that are sparkly, though not necessarily expensive, and her eyes light up at the Moreno glass bracelet he gives her for her birthday.  And bubble baths.  She loves bubble baths.  What surprises him most is how much he comes to love them with her.

 

He likes to appear as the unflappable hard-ass, but Clint has a soft side.  She is pretty sure no one else at S.H.I.E.L.D. knows that when he can, he volunteers to walk the dogs and play with the cats at the no-kill shelter.  That every year, most of his December paycheck pays for a load of toys delivered to kids on the local pediatric cancer ward.  That he makes a point of giving time to a group that helps homeless veterans get back on their feet.  Everyone looks at Steve Rogers and see S.H.I.E.L.D’s all American good guy.  Tasha is pretty sure Clint might actually have him beat, except for that whole assassin thing.

 

She cries, at night, sometimes.  Not every night, or at least, not every night he’s with her.  Not even the first few nights.  So it startles him when the movement of her silent sobs wakes him one night after they have fallen asleep in a sweaty tangle of limbs and sheets.  His hand startles her and she jumps and looks, horrified, that he’s seeing this.  He makes it a point to keep his face neutral and eventually, she settles back down next to him, and finally, relaxes into his arms.  After a while, his arms around her become the most natural thing in the world.

  
Clint doesn’t trust easily, or often.  Or hardly ever.  Tasha is pretty sure there are only two people at S.H.I.E.L.D. he trusts implicitly: her, and their handler, Phil Coulson.  She’s a weird choice, given that he was once supposed to kill her, given that she almost got them both killed in Budapest, but he does trust her.  Trusts her to have his back, or, if the situation warrants it, kill him if necessary.  Trusts her not to share his secrets, not to kill him in his sleep.  At some point, trusts her with his heart.  And he trusts Phil Coulson to help them fight the good fight, to give them the straight intel, to not sacrifice them needlessly, if he can help it.  Standing next to the shiny black coffin, she glances back to where Clint stands in the shadow of the trees and thinks that it’s a lot of responsibility to be the only person left in the world he trusts.

 

Clint doesn’t know he’s effectively her first.  The first person, man or woman, who she takes into her bed of her own free will.  Not someone she is seducing for the job.  Not someone she has been ordered to marry.  The first time had been a post mission high, a seeming one off.  They were adults and professionals and it was an adrenaline fuck more than anything.  The second time is after Budapest.  He’s furious with her, at first, until he see the blood seeping from the cut just below her ribs.  The anger leaves him, and he patches her up, and his hand on her body feels like fire, and suddenly, their kissing like teenagers, like their drowning, like parts searching for a whole.  It’s amazing, and wonderful and scary as hell.  Because he’s the wire that tethers her, more than a debt, and the thought of losing him terrifies her.  Love may be for children, but she was never allowed a childhood, so he ends up feeling more like home.

 

Natasha doesn’t know that she’s ruined him forever and saved his life, all at once.  That no one else could fill the place she has carved in his heart.  No one would even come close.  He knows it’s a liability, in their line of work.  That if it was ever obvious, she becomes constantly at risk.  He has nightmares, sometimes, when she’s out of assignment and not with him, of her death.  Or worse, her death at his hands.  If he had put an arrow through her heart instead of her calf, if he had followed orders, she would never have been in his life.  After Loki, after the Tesseract, he breaks out in cold sweats, knowing that if the fight had gone a little bit different, if one step had been out of place, he might have killed her.  Well, Loki would have been doing him a kindness to split his skull.  Because this deadly Russian spy is elemental to him, like breathing, like water, and a world without her is a world he wouldn’t hang out in for long.


End file.
